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Comment by clarkevans | Hacker News Reader

There seems to be a concerted effort to paint the silicon valley elite companies as "dangerous"? I'm not sure it's unwarranted, but it seems relatively recent to me, as if to drum up political support for regulation. What's interesting to me is the big technology/infrastructure/media corporations that are escaping this broad brush, including AT&T and Comcast.

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Don't you think it might have something to do with the fact that they're growing larger and more powerful and influential? It wasn't that long ago that Apple became the world's largest company, Jeff Bezos was recently named the world's richest man, etc.

...not to mention the the 2016 election happened in...2016, in which social media played a huge role. Of course there is new attention.

Exactly. They aren't the picked upon underdogs no matter how many of us might still think of them that way. They are major power centers in our societies that can and do go toe to toe with other major power centers. These major power centers are and always have been jockeying with each other.

In a different context, Madison wrote "ambition must be made to counteract ambition" -- the idea was that if these powerful institutions were wrestling with each other, then that would create a space underneath them where the general public could, unnoticed by the struggling titans, have some freedom of action.

So the last thing I want is for the institutional media or the government to give SV a pass. Or vice versa.

> They aren't the picked upon underdogs no matter how many of us might still think of them that way.

Well, when you narrow the scope to "obvious tech" and brand names end users recognize. However, Silicon Valley is still small compared to the influence of, say, Wall Street.

I guess what I'm saying is that some other institutions may benefit from letting them occupy the public eye.

If you compare: Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Google (Alphabet), and Microsoft on the one hand to JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs on the other, the tech companies have 2.6 times the market cap, 1.6 times the revenue, 1.1 times the net income available to common (a measure of profit) and .7 times the domestic work force.

I wouldn't say they are small compared to Wall Street.

Besides that, the proposition that we should ignore one large industry because another is larger strikes me as obviously wrong.

> the proposition that we should ignore one large industry because another is larger strikes me as obviously wrong.

But not nearly as wrong as ignoring one large industry because another one is more visible to consumers.

I don't think any newspaper is "ignoring" the world of finance.

Hold up: "Ignoring" one large industry was YOUR word-choice, not mine.

If you think it's too absolutist or hyperbolic, then why did you use it earlier to refer to household brand names in technology?

Thanks for mentioning it. I find it easy to avoid Facebook, Google, Amazon. I have nothing against Apple, for their recent design mishaps hurt them more than me.

But, avoiding Verizon/AT&T and Comcast are significant daily sacrifices that require creative solutions which I have not committed to.

My newly built community has Verizon only and nobody else to provide cable internet. This is a good reminder to ask my community on my HOA Facebook page to get other providers, which will involve a lot of digging up of yards and mess.

P.S: My username is anti-social wrt social networks, not wrt people. I have zero friends on FB.

I hope thought leaders start the trend of a reverse network effect or start open protocols for networking.

There have been quite a few articles recently on how the Left has gone from positive on tech to neutral at best and hostile at times, and the Right has also gone from neutral to semi-actively hostile.

> What's interesting to me is the big technology/infrastructure/media corporations that are escaping this broad brush, including AT&T and Comcast.

Doesn't everyone hate AT&T and Comcast already? The danger with the Big Five is that a lot of people still think of them as loving providers of wonderful things.

We need to see this in a deeper historical pendulum that swings (in the U.S.) between extreme tolerance of monopolies (railroad barons, etc, way back when) to extreme intolerance of them - the nadir of tolerance being the 1970's when Xerox was killed off for buying patents it was already using, and had been founded on! (Because that gave it now-exclusive rights to the tech.) We notice the change in how Silicon Valley is viewed because the good press was so very, very good; even when their conduct was not.

I wouldn't put it past Comcast to be running an anti-Google campaign since Google dipped their toes into offering connectivity.

All of the big 5 have loads of potential enemies (or entities who would benefit from their loss), including but not limited to actual nation states. It's IMO unlikely that the uptick in anti-tech-hegemon publicity we're seeing lately is due to any single actor or interest.

it seems relatively recent to me, as if to drum up political support for regulation

Bing-O!

It's a political attack against Mark Zuckerberg's upcoming presidential run. The propaganda machines are starting now by painting a picture of Silicon Valley elite being out of touch, dangerous, etc. etc.

I'm perfectly happy if FB's shady doings keep Zuckerberg out of the presidency. Last thing we need is a president with a propaganda mill

One might look at the founding of Fox News and its relationship to the GOP and be forgiven for thinking the last thing has already happened, even though it only reaches diehard GOP voters.

Well, sure, but that's a little different than direct control.

This would be more like...if Trump ran Breitbart for a decade, and Breitbart had a following consisting of most of the US population and could easily be used to sway huge portions of the electorate because you spent the last decade figuring out how to manipulate your viewers.

Probably a better example is if the GOP owned a private intelligence firm that had data on every citizen and could manipulate what they saw/read/said

Are you saying that any people against a Z presidency are a result of propaganda?

In that case, I'm fine with it. The last thing this country needs is another out of touch billionaire thinking they're qualified to run the country just because they have a bunch of money.

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